Fire-Making Spell

Incantation

Type

Hand movement

Light

Effect

"From lighting a warm hearth to igniting a Christmas pudding, the Fire-Making Spell is always useful around the wizarding household. However, the ability to produce fire with the flick of a wand can be dangerous to your fellow students (and worse, your books)."

The Fire-Making Spell[2], also known as the Fire-Making Charm[3] (Incendio[3][1][2]) is a charm and a form of Conjuration, that can be used to conjure a jet of orange and red flame. Thereby this spell can be used to set things alight[2].

Etymology

In Latin, incendio is the dative or ablative singular of incendium, "fire", and can mean "to fire" or "for fire" (dative), "by fire" or "with fire" (ablative of instrument or means). Thus, the incantation is a way of calling upon fire to burn a desired object, since the spell caster wills harm to be done to an object "by (means of) fire."

The magic word could also be a variant of the Latin incendo, "I set [something] on fire", with an "i" added before the final "o" for euphony.

"Incendio" is the Spanish and Portuguese word for "wild fire". Also, in Italian the word "Incendio" refers to a great fire similar to that one made by Thorfinn to Hagrid's house.

"Incendio" (pronounced in-cen-DI-u) is also the first person singular of the present of the Spanish and Portuguese verb "incendiar", meaning "to set fire to".

In the video game adaptations of Philosopher's Stone and Chamber of Secrets, Incendio is the Bluebell flames charm Hermione uses in the first book. It is used primarily to wilt dank-loving, threatening plants and burn through spider webs. In the later games it resumes its use as a spell to conjure a small burst of normal fire.

Also in the second game, the manuals and in-game info states it can be used as a duelling charm, despite that in the console versions it is the last spell to be learned in the game, thus duels are no longer as abundant. However, proof of this can be seen in that if the player times it right, they can cast their own Disarming Charm on the incoming mis-cast Indencio (as it flies back to hit the player) and thus catching the spell and mitigating it. This also works with Flipendo.

When Rowle used the spell offensively against Hagrid's hut, it caused an explosion, rather than simply lighting it on fire.

Incendio is the first known spell to be cast in the series, although magical devices (Albus'sPut-Outer), abilities (Animagi) and beings (Hagrid) appeared before.

In the sixth film, Bellatrix uses this spell to set Hagrid's hut on fire instead of Rowle.